


Blood and Bone

by Shadaras



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Contains Spoilers for Harrow the Ninth, Gen, POV Second Person, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25795321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: Harrowhark Nonagesimus was born with wings.Unfortunately, Gideon Nav was too, and Gideon's wings were aproblem.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	Blood and Bone

**Author's Note:**

> In case you missed the tag:
> 
> This fic contains spoilers for _Harrow the Ninth_.

You were three when you learned that not everyone was born with wings.

It was a natural assumption: You had wings, bone-colored down making them fluffier than the rest of your necromantic self could sustain. And the only other child of the Ninth House had wings, just beginning to fledge into fresh blood and fire instead of the more fitting Ninth House colors of dried blood and grave dirt. They matched her hair. They matched her eyes. You hated her and everything about her for a myriad of reasons, but most of all for how she _didn’t fit the Ninth House color scheme_. 

But you also told your parents this theory about wings, and they shared one of those _looks_ and took you into the library (your favorite place) and showed you a special text about wings.

You knew how to read, but had only been given simple texts. You could recognise the names of every bone in the body, sound out esoteric theorems, but you stared at the text on the page as if it were alien to you. With more patience than usual, your mother flipped pages with rigid precision and spoke. You remember every single word, even now.

Wings, according to the best academics, belonged to those whose souls grew in conjunction with others. Twins, most commonly, but with greater numbers in a multiple birth, the wings of all involved grew in size: From crow to raven to vulture. When fully grown and spread, wings had never been recorded as longer than the span of their bearer’s arms.

(History and religion spoke that God and his Lyctors had larger wings. History and religion were good at falsifying things to say what they wanted to be true.)

You took all this in, thought about it, and then asked, “Why are my wings so big, then? Why are _Griddle’s_?”

Your father sighed, and said, “I suppose it’s time, then.”

So that was how you learned about the unfortunate circumstances of your birth. It sucked, and for a long time the only way you could cope was to pray the names of the dead as you groomed your wings: One name for every feather, repeated until they were seared forever into your brain as a litany wholly your own.

After that, of course, came the Tomb.

Which you spent fucking _years_ of your life trying to get into, which certainly honed your necromantic skills far beyond anything your parents could’ve dreamed of. Not that you’d ever been _bad_ at it, having so many souls bound into yours to power your birth. But the necromancy locking the Tomb was a beautiful puzzle that sharpened your soul to a razor point.

Even if it didn’t unlock until you fought with Gideon, wings mantled and nails sharpened to talons, and then decided it was better to die than keep living with all this. It did unlock, though, and you saw Her.

Wings as black as the depths between the stars, their central veins pristine star-white. She was breathtaking, from her shuttered eyes to the sword across her chest to the perfect preservation of every inch of her skin. She was dead, but she was the closest thing to being alive any dead thing had ever felt, and so you inched up to touch her, because you couldn’t resist.

In hindsight, that was when everything went wrong.

You don’t like remembering the rest of that day. Your parents died. You reanimated them, because you didn’t see another choice. You saw the Body—your Beloved—around every corner: Flashes of black wings, the shadow of her deathly self vivid in your eyes and necromantic senses, the sound of her voice (which you couldn’t have heard, yet intimately knew) murmuring in your ears.

You went mad, and the world kept going, and you kept learning about how bodies worked and how to make anything you might ever need out of bones.

It all served you pretty well, because that’s what bones did.

Gideon didn’t, but you didn’t need to care except for how she harried you into flying with her so that she could have “a partner to practice formations with” or because Gideon was curious about “how far away from the ground _can_ you still use skeletons anyway?” with a side of “Yo, I’m bored and you’ve been sitting there for _hours_ , come play tag” or some other awful and banal thing that no Reverend Child of the Ninth House would ever be caught dead doing.

Which didn’t stop you from, occasionally, going and playing Gideon’s pointless games. You didn’t want to lose so much muscle mass that you couldn’t fly anymore, and what flesh magic you did teach yourself was entirely for the maintenance of wings that grew too fragile on the Ninth House diet. You had to repair them, because you didn’t want to lose this part of your birthright. You also had to shift around your own composition, sometimes, to get off the ground; mostly adding muscle where you lacked it, but also sometimes removing mass in your arms and legs to compensate.

(Gideon just flew, strong and proud and delighted, crowing to the sun for freedom. It never helped her escape; it just taught you how to seed clouds with minute particles of bone that would cling to her skin and which you could grow great masses heavy enough to bear her down again.)

You were seventeen when you left the Ninth House, Gideon in tow, and first saw the reactions to black nuns hooded and robed save for your giant wings.

Yours are yet paler in this awful sunlight. Gideon’s _sparkle_ , gold limning the edges of her feathers dramatically enough for both of you. You knew you were going to make an entrance, but you’d hoped it would reflect more upon the Ninth House than Gideon’s _wings_.

Regardless, Teacher blanched upon seeing you, and stuttered through his introduction. Dulcinea’s eyes widened as Gideon caught her, fragile powder-blue feathers cracking against your cavalier’s arms. Ianthe and Coronabeth’s gilded wings—wide enough to bracket their heads, not large enough to fly—mantled and fluffed as they stared at you.

The rest hid their reactions better, though you caught Sextus trying to measure you with his eyes. He came to some conclusion, but it took you weeks to learn what it was.

By then, it was too late.

By then, you’d already learned the secret of Lyctorhood, and rejected it.

But then here it was, staring you in the fucking face, and—

Your wings are stained with blood now. Remarkable, isn’t it, how they almost overshadow you?

But you meet your God and he cradles you in wings the color of the sun—blazing blue-white at the shoulders to cool red at the tips—as you pledge yourself to him, and they are vaster yet than yours. He praises you for adapting so quickly to the wings, and delights in your ascent to his side.

It is a comfort.

You do not tell him why you are so well-versed in wings. A small, paranoid part of you wants to keep that secret as long as you can.

(Later, when you learn Ianthe did not share your secret, you decide to trust her with the unimaginable choice that you believe is your only way forward. You might hate her, but you need some partner in this fucking place, and she’s the only choice.

You just hope you won’t regret it.)


End file.
